This $299 Robot Can Keep Your House Safe From Intruders

At CES, Robotex showed off its latest robot, made with BYOD in mind. This watered-down consumer robot is significantly cheaper than the line of robots Robotex sells to police departments, the military, and corporations.

Nathan Gettings founded Robotex in 2007 and has created a line of robust robots with a team that includes the founders of PayPal and researchers from Stanford's robotics lab. The robots that the company displayed at CES included higher end robots that cops, the military, and corporations use to detect physical, chemical, and security threats. However, the latest line of robots is a BYOD robot, which is cheaper and can be controlled by a smartphone.

The new robot only costs $299. Consumers and small businesses who want home security can stick their iPad on the robot and use another phone to control the robot. The iPad on the robot directly controls it and accepts the commands from the remote iPhone.

Just because the server market's in the doldrums doesn't mean innovation has ceased. Far from it -- server technology is enjoying the biggest renaissance since the dawn of x86 systems. But the primary driver is now service providers, not enterprises.